DARTMOUTH — In a vigil held at noon Wednesday, student leaders and campus officials at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth offered their respect for victims and first responders in the aftermath of the bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon a year ago.

Standing under a cloudless sky and whipped by strong winds around the Karam Campanile Tower near the Claire T. Carney Library, speakers addressed a gathering that included dozens of students, university officials and members of multiple media outlets.

“A lot happened over the past year,” said David Milstone, UMass Dartmouth’s associate vice chancellor for student affairs, who led the vigil. “While crises happen everywhere, we’re not measured by the crises themselves, but by how we respond.

“We held the first vigil right here,” Milstone said as he described a campus whose students and communities were — and still are — actively engaged in their communities well before the events on April 15, 2013.

“This is who we are,” he said. “We’re not to be measured by one incident.”

Others’ remarks were similar.

“A year ago, we gathered in the same spirit to remember those who perished,” said UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Divina Grossman. “We’re here to convey empathy, support and our prayers.”

Grossman's speech was followed by students' remarks.

Ejaz Hassan, who serves as president of Muslim Student Association, spoke after reciting of a passage from the Quran.

"We were shocked to hear” the news of the marathon bombings, Hassan said as he urged gatherers to appreciate their religious, ethnic and economic diversity and try to “live in harmony.”

“Our campus and our nation is very diverse. Coming together as we are here today, supporting each other in difficult times is what gives us a sense of community,” Hassan said.

“We’ll never be able to forget last year’s horrific acts in Boston. We’re here today to remember and honor all of the victims and first responders,” said Jacob Miller, UMass Dartmouth’s student trustee. “I think we have faced trying times with the nation, state and university becoming stronger.”

Miller said he didn’t want to “forget or erase this event and its unfortunate connection to our university."

"But I’m here to celebrate all we have done as a university to come together in the face of this adversity,” Miller said.

That includes a commitment to serving others. “Over 200,000 hours of community service year after year," Miller said. "We are dedicated to helping others.”

In his remarks, campus Chaplain Neil Damgaard spoke of maintaining humility in light of tragic events.

“I find that most of us do not enjoy being humbled. When that happens, it’s very hard” Damgaard said. “And few things like what happened a year ago have that effect of humbling us, like a tragedy that we watched and endured.

“But getting humbled by one means or another is probably good for us in a long run — to not love ourselves too much, to not become too smug about our education and advantages, because it can evaporate in a minute,” Damgaard said, prior to recalling another tragedy that occurred seven years ago in April — the Virginia Tech shooting that claimed 32 lives. Damgaard recalled that the university came together in similar fashion on that day, with another vigil.

Justin Gray, a UMass Dartmouth junior from Swansea, stood near the back of the gathering, holding a handmade sign that read, “Stay Boston Strong by running on.”

Gray said he made the sign to value what "was lost and the (race’s) runners.”

The subjects of accused marathon bomber and former UMass Dartmouth student Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the evacuation of the campus the weekend following the bombings, did not go unaddressed.

Prior to the vigil, Grossman was asked by members of local media outlets prior to the vigil whether Tsarnaev would “always be remembered and associated” with UMass.

Grossman said, “I think it’s unfair to taint and diminish the 9,100 UMass Dartmouth students whose efforts and work ethic define our campus” because of one student.

“I don’t want their work to be diminished by what happened,” Grossman said.

“It is still in the back of my head,” said Hubert Thevenin Jr., who was a resident assistant at Pine Dale Residence Hall, Tsarnaev’s old dorm, when the campus was evacuated.